Process
INSTANT INTEL Ethanol Producer Magazine talks with two providers of inline spectroscopy about the actionable insight of seeing inside fermentations in real time. By Tom Bryan
Until recently, the only way to understand what was happening inside a given fermentation was to analyze samples— offline, in the lab—after the process was done or approaching completion. While still necessary and effective, post-fermentation HPLC does not necessarily give ethanol producers the actionable data they need to make adjustments in real time. Today, that’s changing, as high-tech spectrometry instruments are being installed at ethanol plants inline— tied into the process—giving producers a continuous picture of conditions inside fermenters and allowing them to spot and correct problems as they occur. Ethanol Producer Magazine spoke with Steen SkjoldJørgensen, vice president of Biofuels Business at Specshell ApS—maker of automated, inline spectrometry systems for ethanol production called Zymon—and Jonathon Speed, product and applications manager at Keit Spectrometers—maker of the IRmadillo FTIR spectrometer. Here’s what each had to say.
18 | ETHANOL PRODUCER MAGAZINE | OCTOBER 2021
TOUGH TECH: Keit’s IRmadillo spectrometer has no moving parts, making it robust and reliable. The instrument can be bolted onto the ethanol process—typically on recirculation lines—with no need for protection, flow cells or fiber optic probes.
EPM: Steen, how is process monitoring with mid-infrared spectroscopy a true modern marvel in terms of how it gives producers eyes on fermentation while it is happening, giving them actionable, real-time information? Skjold-Jørgensen: Online monitoring of mashing and fermentation processes is an old dream, pursued by many, that has been elusive until now. So far, mapping of what was going on in a fermentation was done by tedious sampling procedures in combination with offline laboratory analyses, resulting in delayed information subject to human errors. Hence, much value has been missed due to lack of intervention in clearly sluggish or infected batches, and the insights around changes in processes and inputs were slow to materialize. EPM: Jonathon, Keit has had success in applying its static optics FTIR spectrometry technology to ethanol production. Explain what a static optics FTIR spectrometer is, and how it can benefit today’s ethanol producers? Speed: FTIR spectrometers use infrared light to record a spectrum of the liquid they’re inserted into.
Skjold-Jørgensen
Speed
